West Virginia University
Masters in Software Engineering Program
SENG 530 - Test #2
(Take Home)
Due: March 22nd, 2002
SUBMIT BY E-MAIL ([email protected])
1. Systems are generally too complex to be inspected in their entirety. Consequently, a decision needs to
be made as to which system components will undergo inspections. Explain how to make this choice
and when.
2. You are asked to serve as an inspector on code review for a complex real-time control system. You
notice that so-called system states (variables that "remember" the values they held in previous iteration
of the control loop) are implemented as linked lists. In other words, state values from previous
iterations are linked by pointers to the variable holding the current value. These lists appear to be
truncated, but the storage is never released. Would you issue a problem report? Justify your answer.
3. Compute a rough person-time estimate for an inspection effort at the code level with the following
parameters:
- About 6,000 lines of code need to be inspected.
- Each inspection meeting includes five individuals with their roles following the standard description.
- About 30% of all meetings require another meeting (1/2 time in duration from the original meeting).
4. In the class, we gave some good example of measurement objectives from both managers' and
engineers' view points. Now, consider the user's viewpoint. What measurement objectives might a
software user have?
5. Suppose that a software producer considers software quality to consist of a number of attributes,
including reliability, maintainability, and usability. Construct a simple GQM tree corresponding to the
producer's goal of improving the quality of the software.
6. Do you agree or disagree that the number of defects found by, for example, code inspections, has
nothing to do with the expected operational reliability? Whatever answer you choose, provide
arguments in its defense.
7. What is an operational profile and why is it so important for software reliability measurement?
